Yeah I suppose some of that tech would also enhance the other planets without atmospheres.

I'm a fan of Elite and support this game. It's just that well if I read between the lines it's: post-pone 2 major features for 2019 and no premium content. There's literally nothing new in this announcement that we haven't heard about before for Beyond Chapter Four.

The part about the reason for postponement, "adding some significant new gameplay" is new. And they delayed release of the premium content in order to make sure they get it right. I'm okay with both of these. Or would you rather they rush it out the door so you can complain about "lack of QA" and "not enough time spent on finishing it properly"?

First of all, we would like to take a moment to thank you all for the continued support and making Elite Dangerous the incredible, community driven, phenomenon that it is today.

We started our Elite Dangerous journey over 6 years ago and today hundreds of thousands of Commanders log in regularly to continue their epic space journey. From a personal perspective, joining the team shortly after the kickstarter, and being a part of this incredible community has truly been one of the most amazing highlights of my career. From in-person community meet ups, online community groups and jaw-dropping events, you have always inspired us with your passion and enthusiasm.

Dude, you should start a post like this with a disclaimer that no, you are not leaving the company. This totally sounds like the introduction to one of those lengthy community manager goodbye posts.

We do have one exciting piece of news to share that to date, we have not shared with our community. A while ago, our development went from pre-production into full production on our next major milestone of Elite development.

What that means in the simplest terms is that the team are actively working on the next major landmark which takes us into our next era for Elite. We aren’t going to be ready to talk about or announce any details for quite a while yet, it is early in the development and there is still a long way to go, but I can say that this is something that will be scheduled to release a considerable time after the final update in the Beyond series. We will have more details on exactly what this means and how the era will roll out after the release of Beyond – Chapter Four, but this does mark some exciting next steps and a continued commitment to the long term vision for the game and our community.

So you have exciting news but are not ready yet to tell us what the exciting news actually are... not really exciting from our perspective.

Another area that we’ve had a number of questions on is the “premium content” coming in 2018.

As many of you will know, we previously mentioned that premium (paid for) content would also be coming within the Beyond season of updates and that Lifetime Expansion Pass holders would be getting this for free. However, as we went through the early stages of what the next era for Elite Dangerous would be, we decided that it would be better to spend that additional time on the future content, rather than bringing new types of purchasable content out this year.

And there you do it again, make it sound like you are about to say what it's going to be, only you aren't.

Great update! As a kickstarter backer at the LEP level, I'm glad to hear we haven't been forgotten.

I can live without fleet carriers and beautified ice planets for a while, if it means everything else goes well. I'm seriously much more interested in the new exploration mechanics... like obsessively curious, beyond what we already know about the new DSS probes.

As long as QA gets a good shake up and the long standing bugs get fixed. All's good for me. Top of the icing would be scale up interdictions difficulty just a notch to make PVE combat less optional. Put some challenge back into the game that was there before. Not silly hard like it was once just a tad harder.

Thanks for the update Zac, it's good to hear some honest comments as things have been quiet for several months on the Focused Feedback. I'm a Beta Backer with Lifetime Expansion Pass and have always seen Elites development as a journey not a race, I'm looking forward to what comes next.

However, the fleet carriers specifically were prioritized and unfortunately won't be making it into the Chapter Four update. they may well come in the future and that doesn't mean that they will be paid for content

Ireally hope that carriers doesn't become the new "paid content" Frontier don't go full CIG you never go full CIG. and another thing the Q4 update was the large one because of the carriers and new graphics; so this means that is not going to be a big update anymore?? there is a lot of apologetic and nostalgia use in this announcement which is never a good thing.... im ready to be desapointed.

Honestly? It's a little early at this time to say where fleet carriers will fit in terms of schedules. The team are very keen to bring them in which is why it was on the plan initially. But at this moment other areas of work were prioritized in order to make the for a better update and content for the community as a whole. We'll obviously share all the details as soon as we have more news but the next things we'll be talking about will be the content in Beyond - Chapter Four.

Chapter 4 wont be content complete for 4 more months.

So you don't know if Fleet Carriers are still free or not, but you do know that you can't comment on them for at least another 4 months?

NOT a rhetorical question, looking for honestly clarity here.

Cause that would infer that Fleet Carriers and Squadrons are at LEAST 8 months off at this point.

Thanks for the update, appreciated. Losing anything is disappointing but exploration & mining updates look like making this a great Chapter 4 regardless & sometimes priorities dictate that a feature needs to be delayed.